Report for ICEC 2011- Chamari Edirisinghe
SDC11047.JPG SDC10959.JPG SDC11069.JPG SDC11048.JPG EXPERIENCE REPORT International Conference on Entertainment Computing (ICEC) 2011, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia International Conference on Entertainment Computing is an international forum for the exchange of experience and knowledge amongst researchers and developers in the field of entertainment computing. Different submission types are invited that present scientific, engineering, design and artistic ideas or improvements to existing techniques in the broad multi-disciplinary field of entertainment computing. The circle of participants are varied and from different parts of the world. The conference was held at Simon Frazer University, in the beautiful and tranquil city of Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada. As a first time participant, I felt little out my depth since I am coming from a related, yet different disciplinary. My approach to the computing and how the entertainment computing could be understood spatially was found interesting by several attendees. The questions were surprisingly in the category of light curiosity and the lack of inquiry into the uses of spatial theory to the computer entertainment was felt. I gained the understanding that the focus of the conference is computer games and the term ‘gamification’ was used continuously throughout the proceedings, thus further proving that the platform is dominated by the game designers. Though the variety of intelligent games, interactive games and serious games were in discussion, the game design techniques and related audience engagement were discussed in varying stages of argument. Though the focus on audience is considerable, there was a sad lack of considering the audience as a part of the social whole. That separation was visible in the manner of approach to the gaming concepts and presentations. The interesting keynote by Glenn Entis “ Beyond Badges-Gamification for the Real World” opened the first day by discussing concept of gamification, real world gamification principles and their applications. The keynote in length discussed the interactive environments and going beyond ‘decorating’ websites. I was intrigued by the paper presented by Edirlei Soares De Lima et.al. named “ Draw your own Story: paper and pencil interactive storytelling” where they introduced a system which allows users to freely interact with virtual characters by sketching objects on the paper, which can change the storyline. The study on casual health games for children and teenagers who are suffering from cancer presented by Kathrin Gerling et.al. was able to grip the audience with its poignant subject matter and users, even though the evaluation was very preliminary undoubtedly due to fact that users are in constant emotional and physical changes. The most interesting day for me was the last day at the conference when it started with a keynote from Regan Mandryk named “ Playing digital games will make you a better human being” where she discussed the prevailing negative stereotyping and common myths on how playing digital games will affect a human being as a social being. She has drawn lots of stereotyping in the media on digital game playing, and she introduced her creations of intelligent digital games, though at the end of her keynote she had not infiltrated the ongoing debate on whether the digital games will have serious negative effects on human being. The discussions in the conference were fundamentally of digital games, gamification and serious and intelligent games. Our poster presentation received mild feedback mostly verging on curiosity. The most appealing social experience is the conference banquet at the revolving restaurant on the top of the Habour Center building.